In the early days of cellphones, horror fans wondered if new movies could be scary now that people could immediately call for help. We soon learned there are many ways to write around that. The most obvious is to set your movie in the past.
A simpler (and scarier?) time
Writer-director-editor Ti West sets “The House of the Devil” (2009) in the 1980s, and he sells the setting at every turn – even better than he sells “X’s” 1979. The opening freeze-frames on every credit as our financially challenged collegiate heroine Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) strolls across a chilly campus.
The shots are appealingly short of crisp. It’s easy to imagine I rented “House of the Devil” on VHS from Blockbuster and popped it into my VCR. In mimicking styles of 1980s gems, West creates a classic of the 2009 vintage. “The House of the Devil” put West on many observers’ horror map.
“The House of the Devil” (2009)
Director: Ti West
Writer: Ti West
Stars: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Greta Gerwig
Sam’s campus is sparsely populated perhaps because of “House’s” low budget, but it’s not a bad thing to get viewers thinking about “Black Christmas,” the 1974 masterpiece that influenced 1980s housebound slashers.
With a creepy slow build, West sets up Sam’s plight via another 1980s throwback: She plays phone tag with the purveyor of a babysitting job (unusually tall horror staple Tom Noonan as Mr. Ulman) via a pay phone and messages about missed calls jotted by her irksome sex-maniac roommate.
Housebound horror
Best-friend quirkiness comes from Megan (Greta Gerwig), the type of young woman whose answering machine gives a fake-out “Hello?” as if she is on the line. Megan says what we’re thinking: There’s something off about Mr. Ulman and this job.
Gerwig – also a lauded filmmaker – displays appealing naturalism, but it’s Donahue who is the scream queen here, and a great one. A lot of the final act is free of dialog as Sam pads through the Ulmans’ three-story house, peeking into rooms, turning on lights and mostly finding that everything is normal – so far.
Her tape-player and headphones, plus the fact that a home-delivered medium pizza costs a flat $8 – reminds us of the time period. Indeed, West’s setup of everything is engrossing – Sam’s money woes, the weird babysitting gig, an encroaching lunar eclipse, and especially the titular structure.
Final-act intensity
“The House of the Devil” shows hutzpah by spelling out its concept in the title, and it gives even more information in the opening scrawl: Fear of satanic cults was big in the Eighties, and what we’re about to see is based on a true story. (Of course, we can’t believe that “Fargo”-esque claim. But, unlike Sam, at least we have the internet to quickly tells us if it’s truly a true story.)
I wonder if the film would’ve been even more intense if we didn’t know the precise nature of the evil beforehand. But on the other hand, the fact that I was biting my nails like that Kermit meme as Sam peeks into rooms proves that West gets away with being brazenly up-front.
With “The House of the Devil,” he’s the horror director equivalent of a magician who reveals his secret but then proceeds to amaze you anyway.